Dublin’s PageFair acquired by Canadian rival Blockthrough

Combined business of PageFair and Blockthrough will help publishers to recover revenues lost to ad-blocking technology.

Sean Blanchfield’s PageFair has been acquired by a rival Canadian company called Blockthrough for an undisclosed sum.

Dublin-based PageFair’s technology is used by thousands of websites around the world to help publishers recover revenues lost to ad-blocking technology. Global ad-blocking was estimated by the company at costing the advertising ecosystem $42bn in 2017.

Founded in 2015 in Toronto, Blockthrough is an ad-block revenue recovery platform for publishers.

Never mind the blockers

Prior to its acquisition by Blockthrough, the Dublin company had raised around €3m from investors that include Frontline Ventures, Tribal.vc and Enterprise Ireland.

On its website, PageFair stated: “Together, the combined company is the clear leader in ad-block mitigation solutions, and will offer the industry’s highest-yielding ad-block revenue recovery solution from Blockthrough, combined with the ubiquitous PageFair analytics platform, plus market insights derived from data spanning a combined 10-plus years of experience, helping publishers tackle ad-blocking.”

PageFair said that its trusted ad-block analytics platform, which gives publishers real-time insights into how ad-blocking is affecting their business, will remain free of use and it will continue to publish its annual ad-block research report.